“How precious to me are Your thoughts, God!  How vast is the sum of them!  Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand; when I awake, I am with you.”  Psalm 139:17-18

Do you ever wonder what God sees in you?  Or, what He sees in any of us, really?  I do.  I look in the mirror and wonder “what is there about this face and this personality that makes God think about me?  Who am I, that God would even WANT to think about me?”

You, see I know me.  I’m not a beauty, I’m plain by the world’s standards.  I don’t always think about others; sometimes I’m downright selfish.  I have my faults, and I know it!  I can be arrogant.  I can be unlovable.  But, still, God thinks about me.

The Bible says that God’s thoughts outnumber the grains of sand.  Can you imagine?  Think about that.  Consider all of the beaches on the planet – every sea shore, every sandy lake shore, every ocean shore – and think about how much sand is on even one of those beaches.  Throw in all of the deserts.  Now, picture them together.

A group of researchers from the University of Hawaii decided to estimate how much sand we have on the earth.  They said, if you assume an average size for one grain of sand and you calculate how many grains are in a teaspoon and then multiply by all the beaches and deserts in the world, the Earth has roughly seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains!  (Information from NPR.org.)  That, to me, is unfathomable!

Yet, God’s thoughts outnumber those grains of sand.  God, the Creator of the Universe, the One who made the moon and stars, the One who formed the mountains and dug the valleys, the One who filled the oceans with water, and created the grains of sand, thinks about me and you, in numbers “too numerous to count” (Psalm 40:5).

He thinks about us because He created us.  He thinks about us because He loves us.  Psalm 8:5 says that He has “made (us) a little lower than the angels and crowned (us) with glory and honor.”  He took the dust of earth, formed us (through Adam and Eve), breathed life into us and “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:1 – 2:25).  He loves us so much that He became a willing sacrifice for us.  Jesus, God come down in the form of man, went willingly to the cross as a sacrifice for us, took our sins upon Himself that we would whole in His sight.  We are dust, we are sinners, yet we “have been crowned with glory and honor” and are loved so much that we are worth dying for.

More than the grains of sand… that’s how vast the thoughts of God.  His thoughts toward us are too numerous to count.  His love is beyond measure.  And He says that I’m worth it!